Front Page > Issues > 2004 > April

Sex, lies and breastplates

Seek the Truth

By Yugen Fardan Rashad

Please forgive my tardiness in response but respond I must about the recent controversy regarding an exposed breast on national television. Once again mainstream media misses a teachable moment. This time about the origins of our inhibitions surrounding female nudity. Let me be clear that I’m not an apologist for public nudity, but do want to probe the issue a bit, by posing a litany of rather trite questions. My point is to examine the breast fallout (no pun), and what it may suggest.

How inappropriate is it for a woman to expose her breast? Or, ‘that it violates community values of decency‚’ is acceptable? What are your views regarding common examples of exposed female breast(s): a mother suckling her infant; viewing a cadaver; dishevel due to rape, animal attack, car/train accident, plane crashes; or, a scantily-clad female fleeing an early morning apartment fire? Consider who is at risk for seeing, unannounced, a bare breast, what it encourages, and whose behavior should we be concerned about?

The catalyst for our reflection happened during the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show, when singer Janet Jackson’s breast tumbled from the screen, and into America’s living room. A Freudian slip? Or a malfunction of her red lace slip? Argue semantics if you choose, but know it was — a slip! And now the Federal Communications Commission wants the music industry to give her ‘the pink slip.’ The American moral system is a contradictory confluence of Victorian values and sexual promiscuity. A double standard exists and this is the threshold where pornography has become a growth industry. Society’s fear about nudity require a number of explanations.

One tenable reason popularly floated is Biblical, when disobedient keepers of the Garden of Eden became self-conscious of their nakedness. Do you think Janet’s breast may have served a similar purpose for young girls watching at halftime? That young girls need the entertainment industry to teach them about sex and rites to adulthood speaks in volumes of that apprehension.

Where were the calls of exploitation by an industry that encourages females entertainers to take it off? Jackson’s partner was Justin Timberlake, a mildly talented popular singer, and former member of N’Sync. But what is more significant is what it says about today’s crop of Black female singers.

A passage from the autobiography of Jane Edna Hunter, A Nickel and a Prayer, informs just how far we’ve come on issues of gender, race and culture. In it, she summarizes Black women entertainers who parade their sexual feathers before the public:

“...cultural spaces as the site of the production of vice as spectacle. ...Negro girls dance shameless dances with men in Spanish costumes... The whole atmosphere is one of unrestrained animality, the jungle faintly veneered with civilized trappings.”

I felt aesthetics described above, created anticipation, that led to the uproar. But Ms. Jackson can’t take the entire blame for an industry; no, a nation, that waffles on the question of what is and isn’t appropriate behavior for entertainers, business execs, politicians, preachers, priest, teachers, etc.

Marketing firms and advertising agencies design ads that specifically cater to young people with suggestive, sexual imagery, which is, by some standards, veiled pornography. Popular media beckons these girls from their adolescence. Arousal and temptation is the name of the game. It is a rudderless boat that covets tender sexuality, and loads commercials with a provocative message. The entertainment world is the worst culprit of the lewdness highlighted by the Jackson debacle.

Artists are quick to defend their actions with free speech protections allowed under the Constitution. And, it’s increasingly difficult to attack artists when they only reflect society. The real danger? America is afraid to look in the mirror for fear of the Picasso-esque image that stares back.

An America predisposed to instant gratification is brazenly egged on by an irreverent technology that sets the pace for lifestyles. Why wouldn’t sex be considered a disposable good like everything else in American society? Hence, pornography is the cheat sheet for a promiscuous society in a big hurry.

Today’s packaging of entertainment is influenced by pornography, a practice industry heads increasingly favors to hook a young, voyeuristic/exhibitionist generation. Like animals, we’re reduced to hunting when hungry, nesting when full, and wanting sex, not necessarily a relationship, when nature calls. Commitment unnecessary, and the cycle begins again. This is where we are folks.

So, Ms. Jackson’s action albeit intentional or not, brings us face to face with our American Beauty, Lolita, and The Last Tango in Paris.

The violence towards women should include sexualizing of the female body, and how young girls are coaxed from adolescence by advertisers and marketing agencies, hired by companies to create a future client base. That, my friends, is the real sequin in this tale of sex, lies and breast plates.

Yugen’s writings deal with culture, aesthetics and spirituality. His topics, opinions, and insights pay homage to the scholarly search for truth which lead to personal responsibility and the preservation of community life.